Experimental and simulation study on use of surfactant and de-emulsifier blend additives in steam flood as EOR technique in heavy oil reservoir

Continued research and field application of steam flooding have confirmed an early conclusion that the process is a powerful method for recovering heavy and intermediate gravity crude oils. This experimental study investigates the feasibility of using low concentrate solution of blend of surfactant and de-emulsifier as an additive to steam flooding. This research is also designed to search for optimization of the process of steam flood through recovering additional oil via using a steam with low concentration of surfactant and deemulsifier mixture without the production of oil-water emulsion. To achieve these goals, four flow experiments are conducted as follows: (1) conventional water flood (2) surfactant solution flood (3) conventional steam flood and (4) low concentration surfactant added steam flood (SASF). Injection of steam with low concentration surfactant improved oil recovery compared to either surfactant solution or conventional steam flood. A comparison of the obtained results of the four undertaken experiments results in three major conclusions, which are (1) addition of 0.1% volume of surfactant and de-emulsifier blend into steam drive improves its performance and consequently recovers 13% OIIP additional oil compared to conventional steam flood, (2) using higher concentration of surfactant (0.1% vol.) into steam flood will not produce any significant increase in additional oil recovery and (3) the inclusion of de-emulsifier in the surfactant added steam run results in non production of oil-water emulsion. The results of this study have validated the proposed technique of surfactant and de-emulsifier blend additives in steam flood as an EOR process. Furthermore, this technique is expected to have significant impact to attain potential incremental oil recovery, if applied in current projects of conventional steam flood and/or water flooded reservoirs.